Little Artist
by AllAmericanSlurp
Summary: Little six-year-old Owen has a little bit of "artist's block" on his mind after receiving his first full art set... and yet inspiration strikes just where it seems to stop! One-shot.


**Whoa, there! I wonder what y'all are thinking... AllAmericanSlurp's back with yet another one-shot!? Didn't she just _post_ Heart of Stone? She takes forever with updating and posting nowadays!**

**Well, this story struck when I was wondering what to write since I had writer's block on all other stories. I wanted to explore a Lab Rats character whose, well, character, hasn't been fully revealed yet. I have yet to do one about Trent, so _hands off on that idea!_ But I thought about Owen for a bit, since Ethan and rape of Bree is more than a bit popular in this archive. *frown.* Anyways... that's all I'll say for now, but please enjoy the story and review!**

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Disclaimer: I do not own Lab Rats.

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Little six-year-old Owen stared at a white canvas-sheet on his artist's easel he'd gotten for his sixth birthday. It was only a day after he'd _turned_ six, and he thought he might as well make use of his one gift, as his grandparents were a _little_ stingy with gifts. _What do I do with this?_ He wondered briefly, before taking the paintbrush in his hand and held it, admiring the clean new wood.

He had seen his parents paint before. They had the huge, paint-spattered dirty paintbrushes with inconceivable stains. He had actually admired them when he was only four.

It was only when his mother had remarked on his finger-paints in pre-school that he'd noticed he _liked_ being an artist. The sensation he got creating something, sketching out his feelings, drawing his emotions, creating a new life of passion - it was a wonderful feeling.

He had been sitting on his little artist's stool for almost forty-five minutes now, wondering what to paint. Now that he had the tools, he had artist's block. What would he do? His imagination had come to a stop. He hated it when that happened.

"Still trying to decide what to do?" His mother came out onto the patio and sat down on one of the lawn chairs.

Owen nodded, clutching the paint set.

"What's making it so hard to put your sentimental thoughts on canvas?" She joked. She had been an artist since she was three, and she hoped to pass on her artistic traits to her baby son. Her husband had been an architect for a decade before deciding he really loved to bring out hidden things in a block of stone, marble, wood, steel. He had quit his job as an architect to become a sculptor, which he never regretted. When Owen was born, he had opened his baby eyes to see wooden carvings, glass figurines, marble statuettes, placed around the house.

"It seems like a blank piece of paper. If you find an idea you like, it goes away. And then you don't want to make the idea anymore. So you leave the canvas because now it's painted on and there's only eight canvases Grandma and Grandpa gave me. So then I take back what I wanted to paint. And then I waste all of them and then there's no more canvas to paint on."

"Ten," Owen's mother, Scarlet, corrected absentmindedly, thinking about what Owen had said. Little innocent Owen. And yet he spoke with truth. When Scarlet was little, she had abandoned so many artworks because she wasn't satisfied with how they began. They still lay in her closet, unfinished.

"You know what, Owen? Make that your painting. Make your unwillingness to ruin a perfect, white, blank sheet of canvas into an abandoned work. Make a painting out of something that has no word for it."

"What does 'abandoned' mean?" Owen asked, sucking the tip of his paintbrush.

Scarlet gently took the paintbrush away from Owen's mouth and laid it on a paper towel on the lawn table. "Left behind, like so many of my unfinished pieces..." she mumbled.

"But what if nobody likes it? What if it turns out bad? Are you sure I should do this?" Owen said worriedly. _He sure thinks too much for his own good sometimes. It's good for a little boy to start thinking at a healthy age, not to fret about something at only **six**. _

"That's for _you_ to decide," Scarlet said compassionately, stroking his head. "What do you want for lunch?"

"Anything's... fine..." Owen mumbled, staring at the canvas with a renewed look on his face; more determined and set.

"Really? I can give you an onion stew with sauerkraut - "

"Anything but that!" Owen yelled frantically. Scarlet laughed good-naturedly and said, "Oh, relax, I'll bring a tuna fish sandwich out. Have fun, my junior artist." She slowly closed the sun-room doors, smiling to herself. Little had she known her son's worrying would prompt her to finally complete her uncompleted works.

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Scarlet's husband, Auguste, had graduated from college with an engineering degree, and had pursued his career in architecture. When _he_ was little, he had always found tinkering with wooden blocks and plastic Legos fun to do and pass the time. During homework, he'd fiddle with a bendable toy that could turn into a house, an apartment, a building office, or a store. All you had to do was re-arrange the twisty blocks (all connected) and the patterns on each face of the block would come together as said designs.

But eventually, he'd found that putting things together, like houses, over and over again, got a little dull... and repetitive. Auguste still liked making things out of tangible objects, but the fun had been taken out of creating buildings. One day he was on his lunch break, and that was his eureka moment. He had been working on one of his biggest projects of the year, a public library in the downtown area of Mission Creek, and he was reviewing the blueprints for the Science Fiction section, which had a wing of its own.

There was a little chip of stone on his lunch table, and just curiously, playing around, he took his tools, miniature ones, that he used for carving patterns into the crown molding of buildings and the outside structural designs, and worked for an hour straight. After his men had reminded him that he should hurry up and finish his sandwich, he proudly presented his finished work: an effigy of one of his crewmen, Leroy.

Leroy had been called to stop operating the crane and come and look at what his boss had done. Leroy protested, worried he had done something bad but was unaware of it, and then his mouth dropped open in awe at his stone doppelgänger only six inches high.

"Auguste," Leroy remarked, "You should stop designing homes and buildings and start sculpting!"

The little comment changed Auguste's life. It was how he met Scarlet, and without Scarlet, Owen would never have been born.

Auguste stuck around for a little more at the architectural company before reporting to the owner, the up-top boss, that he was quitting, and starting something else. Connor, his boss, was more than a little surprised, as Auguste was one of the top workers of the company, but let him go, giving him his pay for that year ahead of time, wishing him good luck.

And so Auguste's new life was born.

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When Auguste came home from the workshop where he sculpted, he displayed his newest series of figurines - cats in all positions. Leaping, playing, fighting, sleeping, crouching, eating, drinking, yawning - every position a cat could be in, Leroy had it in marble - on the fireplace mantel, which was already crowded with a bunch of other knickknacks.

His wife Scarlet came running from the patio door and said "Honey, Owen's going to be an artist!"

Auguste chuckled. "Well, that's exciting. What's he starting with? Finger-paints? Hand turkeys?"

Scarlet kindheartedly slapped him. "Don't you be condescending towards Owen. He was talking about his inspirational yet non-inspired paintings that no normal six-year-old would even be able to get out in _words!_ He inspired me to finish my childhood drawings!"

"He _did!?_" Auguste demanded. "I've been after you the second we got married to finish those!"

Scarlet gave him the evil eye, causing Auguste to put up his hands in self-defense.

"Look, let Owen finish his painting of whatever it will turn out to be, and then you can see what I'm talking about! Owen is so... _deep._ He's an old soul."

"Pretty soon he'll be musing about the ways of life and why everything is the way it is and why everything _has_ to be the way it is, and why it _can't_ be anything else but what is it," Auguste jested.

"You lost me there," Scarlet said confusedly. "When did you become a philosopher?"

"Since our child became an old soul," retorted Auguste. "So what happened to that double-decker beef burger with extra melted cheese and an extra heavy dose of onions and pickles you said there was waiting at home? It's the only reason I was able to beat the traffic and get home sooner."

Scarlet smiled nervously. "Oh, I just wanted to tell you about Owen. It couldn't wait."

"So there is no double-decker beef burger with extra melted cheese and an extra heavy dose of onions and pickles?"

" ... No."

"_Scarlet!"_

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Scarlet's pep talk with Owen had helped, and he finally was able to remove the huge artist's block taking over his imagination. He thought about what represented failure - what _were_ those colors he'd learned in first grade art class? Black was negative, right? And gray was kind of a shifty, failed color that didn't look good on anybody.

He dipped his new, shiny paintbrush into the color palette and went to work.

Soon, half of the twelve inch by fifteen inch canvas sheet was covered. Although it had seemed to intimidating and large at first, it really wasn't so very bad after all. Time hardly seemed to have flown by since his mother had given him his tuna fish sandwich and since he heard the pots and pans rattling in the kitchen as soon as the kitchen light flipped on.

Although six-year-old Owen probably couldn't read an analog clock, he knew that it was close to dinner when he finished the painting, finally!

He hopped off his stool, stretching, as he'd been sitting in pretty much the same position for four hours, and then set the paintbrush and palette down on the lawn table. Just as he reached the door, the door opened and his father Auguste came onto the porch.

"Daddy, I made my first real painting while you were gone!" Owen exclaimed excitedly.

"Your mother told me, Owen! I'm so proud of you." _You'll continue the family tradition of being an artist._

"Want to see it, Daddy?" Without waiting for an answer, he put his tiny fingers in his father's rough, big hands, and started to drag him towards the easel.

Auguste called through the screen door, "Scarlet, honey, Owen wants to show me his picture!"

"Go on right ahead," she called back. "I can't leave the stove or else the green beans will burn. I can look at it later!" After she finished there was a huge sizzling sound and then a noise that sounded like pressure being released.

Owen skidded to a stop in front of his canvas, and Auguste took one look at the painting, and was instantly captivated. The beautiful colors of success and the terrible, broken colors of failure, and the mix of shades of both, like incomplete-but-yet-to-be-completed tones, as Owen explained, marched across the sheet. It was abstract art, Auguste noted, but it seemed like reality. Beautiful, tempting reality. Through all of the layers of seriousness, it displayed a child-like quality, a giggling fun time in the hardships of life. _Isn't that what we all wish for? Just to relax and be a child again after dealing through adult business? _

"What do you think, Daddy?" Owen pressed, worried that his father was spending too much time staring at it. Did Auguste not like it?

"It's beautiful, Owen," Auguste said, almost short of breath. "I love it." He hugged his son, and said, "We can show it to your mother after dinner. Let's go inside and enjoy life, yes?"

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**2,000 words! I'm proud of myself. Yes, a slightly cliché, cheesy ending, like Bionic Ice Skating, but it was satisfactory to your fluff sense, yes? I hope so! And tell me what you think! Please, please, please review! And I'll see you all around again for a) _another_ on-the-spot-I've-got-to-post-this-in-the-next-24-hours-or-I'll-explode one-shot, or b) an update on Clandestine Covers or Marcus: Broken Android, or c) Fast Food Frenzy, a one-shot I've been working on for a long time! Anyways, did I say review? Yes! So review! Bye for now!**

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**(I apologize for any spelling/grammatical errors.)**


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